Project 12 - April

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April is represented by:

• Melman in Lizzy's Cafe, Risby Barns
• John being happy that we have started to clear out the garden ready for the new turf and new pond.
• The Oldest Inn in England, Nottingham - beautifully huge Sunday dinners!
• La Roux concert
• An old Bus at the Nene Steam Railway
• Tatty 2 and Tatty 1 in the flowering "Tat's Money"

Each month I do try to use new paper stash from that month. Of course, I really shouldn't have so much new paper stash, but heyho!

Twisted Sketches #49

This week the Twist is "colour", here's my take:


This is Tiddles. He was one of the cats that lived next-door-but-one when I was little. His real name was Linus, but I wanted to call him Tiddles.

One day my parents told me that Tiddles had moved house and gone to live at an old people's home... of course, that's not what had happened to Tiddles. :(

Diana Vickers

Excellent concert!!!

Sketchy Thursdays & The Mill Pond

The local cheapy shop is suddenly stocking a whole bunch of American Crafts products and on Saturday I bought myself one of their albums that came with some of the Travel range. This is one of the lines that I bought pre-Road Trip so I'd be ready to scrap it when I came home. I'd actually run out of it, although I'm not the biggest fan of AC papers, so I thought some more wouldn't hurt.

Of course, it's the cheapy end of their ranges and is single sided and thinner than the papers I originally bought. This makes me want to pop them away and ignore them! So I've attacked them straight away and done a couple of layouts from them using as -yet-unscrapped Road Trip photos.

This first one is for Sketchy Thursdays 5.6 - The Scenic Route.

Valley of Fire State Park, Daddy and the beautiful hire car!

I then went right outside the box with this one for The Mill Pond's latest Write It Challenge. The task was to incorporate your title within your journaling and try something different with your title and or journaling that you personally have not tried before. Well, I've certainly done that! I've never done such a large title and I've certainly not stamped and cut out such a lot for a title before either. My journalling is between the lines of the title:

I'm not happy with the large balloon, but I'd stuck it down before I realised that I should have folded a piece of paper and just done half a balloon (like paper dolls). I rectified that for the tiny balloons and you can see the lines up their middles! I do enjoy making that grass, although it is time consuming.

A close up so you can see the journalling / title / grass and balloon.

I'm not sure the journalling is visible in the picture, but the gist of the story... Mark is a friend of my Dad's and we knew he'd be at Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta. We hadn't arranged to meet up, but after the mass ascension on the second day we were there he just found us on the field! It's a BIG place and it was amazing how he managed it. A little bit of home in the middle of America.

Official 2008 Balloon Fiesta Gallery.

EDIT: I won!

The Studio - April 18th

I actually didn't do this layout with The Studio challenge in mind, but could've sworn I'd seen a challenge recently which involved scrapping an event that had no photos.

I went ahead and made the layout on Monday. This afternoon I suddenly realised that I hadn't updated the new link to The Studio blog, so it wasn't coming through correctly on my feeds reader. That's when I realised where I'd seen the challenge before... luckily the deadline has been extended to May 9th, so I'm not too late to enter this.



I've used a bit of Halloween paper, as well as cutting up and distressing the paper bags from the gift shop. Then I included the tickets from the performance and a little tag that I cut up that was attached to the bag I bought. The background is red-spattered (but that might not show up well in the picture)which echoes the blood-spattered set.

Funnily enough, the three Witches were wearing distressed versions of the aprons that the Globe staff wear. It has the same logo on that you can see on the distressed paper bags on my layout. Well, I was amused by them.

I've never done so much journalling before I can see how wonky my handwriting is!

Also using this as my May inter-team mojo challenge entry - reusing and recycling. Plenty of that here!

Sketchy Thursdays 4.29

Getting at the last minute with this one, although I made it last week. Forgot all about it in my layout tidying session and filed it away. These are a couple of the pictures my father took as slides way back in my childhood and as recently had made up into digital copies so they can be printed off as 'normal' photos.


This layout proves that there was a time when I was able to run races, win them and wear leotards. Those days, however, are looong gone!

Have started using Glossy Accents more now that I'm figuring out how to use. There's a pleat in the strip across the bottom and I've GA'd the flower element and stuck it on for height. Should've taken a close up of it as it looks a lot better in real life.

Layouts from Today

Finally got some of the pictures back that I took of Alex in London. Really not impressed with the service from Snapfish, but at least they were free. The pictures aren't of the same quality that I've been getting from Photobox either. Shan't be straying from there now, freebies or not.

I'd bought myself a piece of this 3 Bugs paper because it features lions and giraffes. I'm still waiting for my giraffe stamp from Scrap Shed so I can use the giraffe strip. Of course, I'm still waiting for that as well and it's been over a month. Great. Somewhere else that won't be getting a return order.


This is the weekly challenge layout, not completely happy with it - probably should have deviated from the sketch a little bit more.

All my Stash

This is my stash. All of it that isn't 12 x 12 patterned paper.

It lives on two shelves and my desk top. A small amount is out of
shot, but very little.

All my Paper

This is all the paper that I have. It sits in this one box, mainly
sorted by brand. Each collection in it's own 12 x 12 plastic wrapper.

Meadow Brown 2

My butterfly layout won Challenge 4 at Creative Craft World!

I knew there was a reason for taking pictures of things even if I should have been thinking about rocks! :)

Twisted Sketches #46 & Gutter Girlz #36

I doubled up with this layout. It's partly Twisted #46 and partly Gutter Girlz #36. I started it with the Twist of "touch":

You see, I'm being touched by Max Grodenchik who plays Rom in Deep Space Nine. Eventually the character of Rom becomes Grand Nagus of Ferenginar and everyone knows that the Ferengi are motivated by profit. Max wrote something on the photo about profit, so I can only hope that the touch of the Grand Nagus does, indeed, help me to gain profit. Even though I'm not only a small-lobed female, but also a hew-man...

It was then that I realised that actually there was my Gutter Girlz entry - I'm a Geek and it's no secret, everyone knows and I don't care that they know it!

Nene Valley

Another Old Inn

Nottingham does a good line in old inns!

Morning tea

And Melman getting into the shot!

Oldest Inn

Good beer at the oldest inn in England.